A better idea: Let’s halt HALT

When you know a bill was cynically crafted: If it limits the current president’s “discretion” but lifts the restriction for the next president.

This describes Rep. Lamar Smith’s Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation (HALT) Act. President Obama has directed that immigration officials use “prosecutorial discretion” in enforcing immigration law, prioritizing the deportations of criminals over those accused of civil violations. Entering or living in the country without the proper documents is a civil violation.

In a memo to colleagues, Smith wrote that the bill “would restore these powers to the next president whom the American people elect – on January22, 2013.”

Want to bet that if the next president is still named Obama, the San Antonio Republican will reintroduce this bill and if the next president is a Republican, he won’t?

At the heart of the matter is a push, after the failure to enact immigration reform, on deportations. This started in the George W. Bush Administration but continued apace during the Obama Administration, despite his election promise to pursue more humane immigration policy. Immigrant advocates have been highly critical of the president on this score, urging the president to use his discretion to spare those who had no criminal backgrounds or whose deportations would present hardships to their families, members of whom are often U.S. citizens.

For instance, the Secure Communities program, in partnership with local communities, was set up to snag undocumented immigrants ensnared in the legal system who have serious criminal backgrounds. However, more than half of those targeted for deportation had no criminal records or merely misdemeanor records and only 30% were serious offenders of the type the program was intended to identify and deport.

In other words, being deported were folks who posed no danger to the United States but whose hard work has helped a sputtering economy keep chugging along.

Smith clearly subscribes to the what-part-of-illegal-don’t-you-understand school of thought on immigration. But question: If it’s wrong for a Democratic president to exercise this kind of discretion, isn’t it still wrong for a Republican president?

Policies that tear families apart or result in defacto deportation of U.S. citizens because they refuse to be separated is inhumane. The same applies to policies that allow the deportation of undocumented immigrants who, as children, had no say in coming here but now know only this country. The issue of immigration is not as simple as Smith would have you believe.